Tuesday briefing: Could Burnham take Britain back towards the EU?

In today’s newsletter: The prime minister is calling for closer ties with the EU, but what could this actually amount to?Good morning. After a holiday spent contracting nursery bugs from an 11-month-old, it’s good to return. Yesterday, Andy Burnham marked his first day back after party conference by calling for a closer relationship with the EU and drawing a line under a decade of “drift and division”. On Sunday, he said it was “clear” the Kremlin had been involved with the 2016 Brexit referendum vote.Both statements mark a break, rhetorically at least, from his predecessors. Conservative governments long insisted there was no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit vote. Keir Starmer attempted to put the entire issue of Brexit behind him, treating it as a historic event rather than a cause of economic pain.UK | Andy Burnham said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were “almost certainly” behind threats to RAF Fairford, the firmest attribution of responsibility made so far by the UK after an incident late last month.UK politics | A close adviser to Nigel Farage had an influential role at a national polling company despite not being publicly associated with the firm, the Guardian revealed.Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to respond to Russia’s continuing attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as European leaders rally around Kyiv amid a feud with Donald Trump over Ukraine’s strikes on oil refineries.Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the country’s attorney general and the head of the Shin Bet security service to reveal the identities of soldiers and officers interviewed in the documentary NAZA and prosecute them for causing “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests”.US news | RJ Mitte, the young actor best known for playing Walter White Jr in the award-winning TV series Breaking Bad, died on Monday. He was 34. Continue reading...